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Extended Case Study

Project Xenon

An established deal team wants to expand their origination team with a series of senior hires. Project completed across Q4 2023 / Q1 2024. 

Multiple Hires Leveraged Finance Structured Finance Sponsor Finance Unitranche
Senior Hires

The Situation

A growing Leveraged Finance provider, supporting UK SMEs and the Lower Mid-Market, is seeking to expand their deal team with senior technical experts who can originate across a variety of sectors.

Director 

Director 

Director 

Senior Director

Senior Director

  1. Attract market-leading deal professionals to join this growing business.
  2. Ensure candidates are skilled with all technical product requirements, as well as origination networks.
  3. Identify candidates who can best align to client culture and working environment to continue being successful. 
  4. Highly confidential project to be managed discretely in collaboration with Managing Director and HR representative. 

Sponsor Finance

Origination Team #1

  • Unitranche, Venture Debt and ARR Loans.
  • Presence of existing investor (VC, PE or Family office) in company shareholding.
  • Experienced and stable management team in place.
  • Minimum enterprise value depending on product.
  • RCF, acquisition and capex facilities on request.

Leverage Max: 5x EBITDA 

Loan Sizes: £1m - £30m limits

Terms: 3-6 years

Security: Product Specific 

Non-Sponsor Finance

Origination Team #2

  • UK SMEs without PE / VC involvement.
  • Cash-generative businesses with track record of profitability. 
  • Amortising profile with interest-only periods and bullet options available.
  • Can be combined with working capital facilities as a comprehensive solution to support commercial loan structures.

Minimum EDITDA: £1m

Leverage Max: 4x EBITDA

Loan Sizes: £1m - £20m limits

Terms: 3-5 years 

Challenges

With each hire, there were common challenges presented. Putting aside the obvious challenge of sourcing talent with relevant transaction backgrounds, there were also the following considerations: 

Candidate Competition

These hires were being made in a 'candidate short' market. Acquiring the skill set of a transaction experienced Analyst who can add value to the end-to-end origination / execution process, was highly sought by competing lenders and investors.

Candidate Pools

The industry sector and team lends itself to multiple background options, whether it be; Bank, Fund, Alt. Finance, Sponsor or Advisory. Making sure we had strong coverage across each pathway was crucial to ensuring we had conducted a thorough search.   

Candidate Engagement

Due to the high market-competition for recruiting this talent, it was imperative to not only win over the initial attention of each candidate, but to also keep them engaged and have them buy-in to our process more than any other they were currently in. With the ultimate goal of managing through the best talent to successful hire. 

Candidate Culture

Given the possible mix of environment backgrounds, making sure each placement would be comfortable and could thrive in our Client's own environment is a key requirement to give ourselves the best chance at a successful long-term placement. 

Method

Throughout the project there were multiple steps taken to address and overcome the highlighted challenges, briefly summarised below: 

Candidate Competition

Getting to know the management team and gain understanding of the bigger picture allows us to educate candidates beyond a job description and company website. Giving candidates a real insight into the goals and roadmap of a team produces a much more tangible experience to hold onto, when comparing your role against others in the market.

Candidate Pools

Creating a full market-map was essential to having a starting point for possible avenues to source candidates from. This was worked in collaboration with the hiring team so we were also able to identify particular companies of interest as a talent source, but more importantly companies that weren't of interest. Along with leveraging our own experience and our client's insight, this was also achieved through use of industry data and AI sources. 


Candidate Engagement

Keeping a process on track is pivotal to candidate engagement. For instance, introducing structured timelines reduces process-lag and significantly lowers drop outs. Additionally, by creating engaging candidate materials - such as this demo candidate brochure (click for download) - for your hiring process, separates our clients from other hiring competition.

Candidate Culture

Ultimately this comes from getting to know the candidates as well as we know your business and your team. Building these relationships makes all the difference, a significant investment of time and possessing the learned skills of understanding people, allow us to guide your process culturally as well as professionally.

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Future Find were an essential part of the project and a valued partner throughout. In a short space of time, they completed a thorough assessment of the market and compiled a comprehensive long-list of candidates with relevant skills and experience. Comprehensive support was also provided as we worked through selection. 

At all stages, they were clear and transparent in communications with both the business and candidates, a number of whom commented positively about their experience. I wouldn’t hesitate to work with them again.

Managing Director, Team Xenon